Glimpses
by Charis M
Summary: Various Musketeers responses for the "write me a sentence of fic and I'll write you the next five" meme - dribs and drabs and fragments of things. Predictably almost all Athos/Milady; each chapter is tagged with pairing and/or characters as appropriate. [2 new posted 02 July 2016]
1. Fight (Athos x Milady)

**Fight  
**

 _Collecting responses for the "write me a sentence of fic and I'll write you the next five" meme, originally posted to my Tumblr (with a few exceptions that are parts of other pieces). For each fill, the italicised quote is the prompt. Prompts were anonymous except as noted._

* * *

 _"So willing to fight for your country Athos but so against fighting for me, I died more that day you let my carriage go than the day a noose you called for me scarred my neck."_

She's changed, true to her words; England has leached the colour from her, left her grim and hollow-eyed in a way he'd never seen before, even when he'd dropped her locket and turned away an eternity ago. But they had shared moments before parting ways, moments that had whispered of hope and love and things he'd almost forgotten, and he knows – God in heaven, all too well – how deeply it cuts to have hope snatched away.

"I am gentleman enough not to fight for a lady who has made her feelings plain," he ripostes, the words stiff and formal. He thinks of carriage tracks and a pale blue glove and the unexpected ache that had knifed through him when he'd realised she was gone, an ache equal to that when he'd first seen her here, and it feels inevitable that this is what they come to: cut on each other's tongues, bleeding on each other's words.

England is a dreary hell, and they are each the other's devil.


	2. Mother (Athos x Milady)

**Mother  
**

 _I think this one was meant for the AU Lessons is set in, considering recent developments. I've actually got a prompt for something on this line I'm working on, but this was a fun what-if._

* * *

 _"Olivier, your mum knows I am pregnant."_

"How did you meet my mother?" he asks, even as his stomach twists.

"She stopped by while you were out – apparently she wanted to meet the woman making a fool of her eldest." The mocking tone in her voice doesn't quite hide the anger as she continues, "She had already decided I was just marrying you for your money, but apparently now I've coerced you into it by carrying your bastard – or tricking you into believing that."

He's furious at his mother, is definitely calling her later to lay into her for this, but in the moment he's more concerned with the woman in front of him, "And?"

Her smile turns viciously satisfied, "I threw her out."


	3. Earth (Aramis)

**Earth  
**

 _Prompted by the fabulous ScoutLover._

 _I have no idea how this ended up being Aramis when it felt a lot more like an Athos prompt. SORRY._

* * *

 _Whatever he'd come here seeking – an honorable death, atonement, oblivion – it hadn't been this._

The abbé tells him he is driving himself too hard – that whatever his sins, God is patient and loving and will forgive all things in time, but all Aramis can think of is that he has no time – that he must cleanse himself, purge himself, drive those earthly thoughts away before the world tries to draw him back. He has been worldly too long, has sinned too deep, to ever be forgiven; all he can hope for is to make whatever small amends he can.

He had thought, after their farewell, that his brothers understood his choice, even if they did not understand the reason. He had thought they would give him time to see to his soul – that, even if they followed, the abbé and the doorman would turn them away, because a novice is a novice and he is more than ready to swear his life to God.

"You have visitors," the abbé says outside the door, and his heart tries to fall and fly all at once.


	4. Scars (Athos x Milady)

**Scars  
**

 _Milady was sat behind the desk in his musketeers office as his war scarred body fell through the door. "My, you look awful dear husband."_

"Very helpful," he says laconically, but there's no denying the marks war has left on him: his armour may hide most of it, but the scars beneath mirror the scars in leather and steel, and there's no mistaking the hitch in his gait.

She huffs out an exasperated sigh, one he still remembers too well after years spent more apart than together, but there's softness lurking in the corners of her smirk, at odds with the irritation in her eyes. She's always been a contradiction, though – push and pull, demon and angel, and with that it somehow does not surprise him that she should be here, despite how they'd parted. "You didn't damage anything important, did you?"

The arch demand doesn't hide the very real worry underneath, and Athos lets his brows lift in response, the slightest of challenges; he knows her as well as she knows him, and knows she'll understand the invitation.


	5. Wed (Athos x Milady)

**Wed  
**

 _I have a huge mental block on shipping these two with pretty much anyone else, so this one was hard. And I'm sorry if it disappoints as a consequence, anon!_

 _Thanks to D for helping me figure out how to make this work(ish)._

* * *

 _"I see you are getting married," she spoke from the shadows, knowing he wouldn't want to see his estranged wife on what could be his happiest day._

It _should_ be his happiest day, because that's how marriages are supposed to work – never mind that he's _her husband_ , damn it, never mind that the thought of him married to some nameless, faceless woman fills her with such rage that she wants to claw his eyes out, slam him into the wall, kiss that stupid confused expression off his face –

He should be happy, but though there had been uncomplicated joy on his face before she'd spoken, now there's only bafflement, etching the lines – new, born in the long months and bloody days that have passed since she left and returned, and the look is so familiar she feels the heart she was certain was dead stutter – deeper as he frowns. "What are you talking about – I _am_ married, as you should well recall – or did you forget about your husband during your time in England?"

"Then who –?" she takes a step forward almost involuntarily, and the tightness in her voice is giving way to an echoing confusion, and she thinks of the letter that had found its way across the sea to her and thinks she just might kill the man who'd sent it, a little … once she's done drinking in the sight in front of her.

"Porthos," and he's shaking his head, almost laughing, almost smiling, closing the distance between them, and Anne decides that maybe she'll spare the other Musketeer after all; it would be rude to kill a man on his wedding day.


	6. Break (Athos x Milady)

**Break  
**

 _Prompted by Athena, for whom one of these days I may write a fill that's not depressing. (That's a lie.)_

* * *

 _"You know I don't love any one but you. You shouldn't mind because some one else loved me."_

She glitters in the candlelight – jewels winking at throat and ears and breast and fingers, all still softer than the diamond hardness of her eyes – but he knows her no matter what and knows that she is brittle, flawed, may crack at the right (wrong) touch. And oh, he wants to press, wants to see what happens when this façade shatters, because he may know her but even he can only guess as to what lies beneath her mask now.

"You don't know how to love," he shoots back, though, because she's cut him and burned him and bled him, left the heart that yearns for her even now on the floor – because she's nearly killed him more than once, in a thousand small ways, by inches since she returned, and because he wants to hurt her just as much, just as it seems he always does.

One hand, lily white despite all the blood he knows has stained it, lifts towards her throat, falls uselessly back to her side before she squares her shoulders. "I did," she says, and his heart is shattering under her heel as she spins away, and hers is tearing in the hands he clenches at his sides, "once."


	7. Armour (Athos x Milady)

**Armour  
**

 _I almost ended up writing this as gleeful d'Artagnan with his pauldron and fondly irritated Constance, but no, these two idiots must forever ruin my life instead._

* * *

 _"Sometimes I swear you love that doublet more than you love me, I doubt you would even remove it if I asked you."_

It's a symbol, and they both know it, just as they both know she's not really talking about the doublet itself; blue leather, silver buttons, fleur-de-lys pauldron fastened at the shoulder, all marking him as a Musketeer. They make him more than the drunken sot he'd been, more than the naïve young comte who'd been a fool for her, and if he strips those things away at her prompting, then what will he be – what will be left of him?

A man; a man and nothing more, and the man he was has been broken for so long that he fears what he might see now – even when he has seen that he _can_ be more than broken, dares hope once again, but if he sheds that armour and lets her in then he may find the truth to be nothing of the sort, find that he is still just a shadow of a man. He must not, _cannot_ , does not dare, and yet the part of him that leaned into her blade long ago in the château in Pinon aches to do just that, not to learn whether there is something beneath the leather but because he is tired, so tired of all this fighting, her and the past and himself alike –

He dares not, and yet his hands reach for hers, draw them to his throat, where the first button closes; his voice is harsh as he rasps out, "Then don't ask."


	8. Challenge (Athos x Milady)

**Challenge  
**

 _Or "the vaguely Regency AU". XD  
_

* * *

 _Anne was a well educated woman from a free school in the country, she met him at a ball she snuck into and proceeded to explain to him how wrong his opinion was._

He doesn't know what to think of her when he first meets her – she is nothing like the women of his own social class, proper and polished and powdered, delicate and demure and meant to be revered from a safe distance, even if they are wife or family. But Anne de Breuil is a vivid contrast to all he's known, intelligent and educated and not afraid to show it, a crackling bonfire to the safe warm glow of those around him, and he has all the self-preservation of a moth and finds himself drawn in despite his best interests, perhaps precisely _because_ he knows he shouldn't, knows she's nothing safe or sane or allowed.

"And that," she concludes, tapping her fan emphatically against his chest to emphasise her point, "is why you're _wrong_ , monsieur – because there is nothing different between your people and mine except some accident of birth, nothing of divine provenance or worth or anything of the sort, and those who _do_ have fortune should do what they can to help those who do not." Her cheeks are flushed, her dark hair escaping from its intricate braids, her cornflower-blue skirts bright in the light that seeps from the ballroom out to where they stand; it is improper, for her to be out here with him, but she cares nothing for propriety (that is his world, not hers) and he can see little right now but her.

She makes him question everything he knows, with nothing more than a dance and a stroll and an impassioned diatribe on a shadowed balcony, and he throws himself willingly into her flame.


	9. Regret (Athos x Milady)

**Regret  
**

 _Prompted by Athena, with the stipulation of "set some years after Season 3"._

 _This prompt is totally unfair breaking my heart like this. Just so you know. You are a horrible,_ horrible _person and I love you for it. XD_

* * *

 _"I wonder what you regret more now that you know the truth of Thomas, hanging your wife or by doing so condemning your daughter to the same life your wife tried to escape when she met and fell in love with you."_

It's clear he doesn't understand – doesn't want to, shock and confusion and disbelief all warring in his eyes as he stares at her – but the moment when he realises she's not lying is equally plain, as his skin turns ashen and he gropes blindly for his mug of wine, "I didn't –"

"Didn't know, yes –" her eyes are cold, hard, mocking, utterly without mercy as she fixes them on him – because he deserves none (and neither does she, forever matched with him, because they could both have taken different roads), "– didn't know your beloved wife was with child, didn't know that snatching away all sense of security would force her to abandon the only thing she might have had left in the world of you." But she doesn't know if she could have kept the baby if she'd had a choice, suspects she couldn't have looked at that tiny face without being reminded of all she'd lost, of all she hated, of all the pain and agony (and it had seemed right that childbirth should be painful, in the face of all of that), and though she's told herself for years that it had been kinder to leave the girl with others, she still thinks sometimes of what it must have been like for her, to grow up as Anne had without parents or a family or a name to call her own, without a trace of respectability …

"Where is she?" Athos asks, and he's clutching the mug so hard his knuckles are white; his eyes are a little wild now, looking at her (or perhaps through her, seeing what might have been, this daughter with her eyes and his hair laughing as she runs through the fields at La Fère, and _damn Thomas to eternal hell_ for ruining it all, but they'll both burn there with him when this is all done).

Her gaze is unblinking, her face betraying nothing as she says, in a tone that reveals none of her own uncertainties and regrets and the love she still carries (that still cuts her up inside), "I don't know."


	10. Lover (Milady, Constance)

**Lover  
**

 _This one was flagged as crack, and as cracky as the scenario is, I do not write outright crack that well. Work with me?_

* * *

 _Constance smirked with a laugh, looking her directly in the eyes, "would you rather sleep with Athos or Louis again and who's better in bed?"_

It's strange to have come to this, Anne thinks – to not only be friends with a woman she'd tried to kill, but to discuss such things, and yet she and Constance have grown close in the months since their husbands went off to war; this, she imagines, is what having a female friend would be like, having a sister, and while she's not entirely sure what she thinks of it yet, she finds she's cautiously enjoying the experience.

And so she doesn't blink, doesn't flush, doesn't bat so much as an eyelash at Constance's question, just smiles the kind of smile that says everything and nothing at once and taps a knowing finger against her lips. "If I told you to convey my pity to the queen when you visit her next, would that be answer enough?" she asks as the smile takes on an edge. It's a sentiment she means genuinely – the king of France had been a selfish lover, as petulant and self-absorbed in bed as he is in most things, but she'd expected no less and had sought nothing of her own pleasure there; Athos is the only man she's ever wanted just for herself, with no deeper motive, and it's fitting that he's the only one who's truly satisfied her – who's cared for what _she_ wanted, as much (more, even) than for his own desires.

Constance is just looking at her, though, blue eyes wide and surprised and just a little (Anne thinks) pleased, as if the reply has settled a question she's wondered about for some time, and before she can deflect or pose her own question the younger woman grins broadly, wickedly, and says, "So – maybe there's hope for the two of you yet."


	11. Burn (Athos x Milady)

**Burn  
**

 _Another one for a prompt from Athena, with a predictably sadder slant. :3_

* * *

 _"Do you stay awake at night burning...tell me I do not live in your dreams"_

He has, and she does; more than once, more times than he can count, as if even death (real, imagined, hated and wished for in the selfsame breath) could neither dull her presence nor blunt the need that had woven into his flesh, his bones, his very soul. He had dreamed her then, in a house forever haunted by the shapes her ghost had taken (flowers and a portrait, half-remembered laughter and broken cries, a locket that weighed him down far more heavily than tarnished filigree ought to and anchored him to life without her even as it shackled him to the past), and he'd dreamed her in Paris even after he knew she lived, and he'd thought (as he'd let her, bade her, forced her to go) that he might in doing so free them both from what had been, but she's never gone, and he thinks (hopes) that she never will.

And now they stand here, on the precipice of something unnameable, and he looks at her and thinks of the endless nights when he'd tried to blot her out with wine, with endless hours of drills, with sleeplessness that never fully drove her presence from his mind, and thinks that if she only haunted him in his dreams it would be easier by far, because at least then in his waking hours he would have a reprieve. But the woman before him is even more of a ghost than her memory, little more than a shadow, something that might once have been and that he – _they_ – have shattered beyond mending; and if, he thinks, she drags him down into hell alongside her, then it is no more than he deserves for the sins of his past (and at least she will be there, and not her wraith).

He swallows, forces moisture into a mouth parched, hot, fights the sudden need to drink her down to ease an endless aching thirst, and says, in a strangled voice, "Why ask what you already know?"


	12. Half (Athos x Milady)

**Half  
**

 _And another of Athena's prompts. I'll give a pass on multiple sentences of prompt when they're this much fun to write. XD (In hindsight, maybe I should've cheated and said 3 sentences of prompt = 15 sentences in response, but I'm enjoying abusing the English language to keep these at five ...)_

* * *

 _"Half the time I want to kill you."  
"Right, and what about the other half?"  
"I want to kill myself for feeling what I feel."_

"You won't do either," she says, and those green eyes regard him shrewdly, seem to peer into his core, stripping away flesh and bone and dispassionate pretence until she can see to the heart that has always been laid bare in her hands (that beats faster even now at the touch of her gloved fingertips through his doublet, at the spark neither of them is ever armoured enough against).

Half the time, but that has changed from the first, and he finds he's having to remind himself more and more often of all she's done, because with her there memory threatens to eclipse her sins (and his own), and he wonders _what if_ , wonders if he can be forgiven his own deeds while condemning her for hers, wonders and remembers and wishes, _yearns_. Death would be easy and solve nothing, and if dreams of his hand wrapped tight about her throat make him ache even as those of her delighted laughter do, that only serves to prove that they have broken each other past all hope of mending, damaged each other beyond measure, and it is fitting that she alone should make him burn, because that way he will at least not ruin anyone else.

She's still looking at him, chin tilted up in challenge, eyes chips of jade in a porcelain face as cool and closed as any doll's, but he knows she's nothing of the sort and that to hurl her to the cobbles beneath would shatter nothing save perhaps an illusion, and yet he wants to all the same, because his face is just as much of a seeming and he wants truth and the heat of her to drive away the chill that lives in his bones and threatens to consume him; no matter why it is she heats his blood, she at least (alone) makes him feel alive.

"Perhaps," he says, and does not try to disguise the bitterness, the anger, "I'll do both."


	13. Pull (Athos x Milady)

**Pull  
**

 _I took the liberty of treating this prompt as dialogue. Intended to be set during S02E02 ("An Ordinary Man")._

* * *

 _"We would have eaten each other alive and then we would have exploded."_

"You say that as if we didn't," he says, words as cool and remote as the ice in his eyes – ice where she had been so accustomed to seeing fire simmering beneath, hatred and hunger tangling together, anger and attraction inextricable for so long, and she wonders at the reply if perhaps he _is_ right, perhaps that's exactly what's happened in these months of lashing out at each other. What is left of either of them at this point, now that they have sucked the marrow from each others' souls and remain unslaked – what had there been to consume but the disparate passions, and with those emotions burned out what is left, any longer, for the explosion?

The pull remains, even now, as it was ever there before; they are iron and lodestone, undeniable, magnetic even without the impetus to act on it, and she wonders if it is only a matter of time – if together, inevitably, the fire will find fresh tinder and rekindle and they will destroy themselves and those around them in the resulting conflagration, shatter an entire world as they had years ago (a world that reels even now, and she forces herself not to think of La Fère, of dead dreams, of blood she would have gladly stained her hands with if not for what followed). It remains, and she looks at him there in the verdant shadows of the forest, her hands outstretched to seize a chance that's fallen all unexpected into her lap, and feels the hunger gnaw at her even when a triumph is so close; she wants to grasp, to _take_ , to devour or be devoured, if only so this finally _ends_ , but no matter how hollow she feels, the truth remains the same.

The pull remains, and after months apart she is still dead, still bleeding, still refusing to kneel beneath the strain because she _survives_ , and she's not about to let anyone take that away from her, even if she has to be empty to do it.


	14. Naïve (Athos x Milady)

**Naïve**

 _I really wanted one more line in this for a verbal answer from Milady rather than that final thought, or maybe just a lot more words because this is one of those bits that feels as if it wants a bigger story. Set in a hypothetical post-S2 AU._

 _(Original plan: to end with implications of adrenaline-fuelled sex. Instead I got angst. Story of my writing life. XD )_

* * *

 _"You'd better be careful, if you keep this up, I may have to take you for granted."_

He wrenches his sword out of the body at her feet and looks up at her, and there's something in his eyes, wild and a little uncontrolled and so unlike what she's used to seeing in him, something that suits more than the veneer of civility he wears along with his doublet and pauldron and cloak – something that makes her think that perhaps she's not the only one who's changed, or perhaps they have both shed the skins and seeming they wore those years ago, and he has become who that young nobleman was always meant to be. There is blood around them and on them both, their own and that of those dead and dying at their feet, and there is a packet of despatches and critical information wrapped in boiled leather laced into her corset that needs to be delivered to the front as soon as possible, but none of that matters in this moment quite so much as what she sees there, in his slight smirk and that hot blue gaze fixed on her own.

"What, you'd trust that I would ward your back?" his tone is caustic, mocking, but there's a note beneath that makes it clear he's not unaffected by this either; she wonders, suddenly and inappropriately, what he might do if she were to kiss him right now, one hand in his sweat-darkened hair and the other twisting into blue leather, wonders whether he'd taste of blood and gunpowder and exertion instead of regrets and might-have-beens, wonders –

"Right," she retorts, though, with a toss of her head before kilting up her skirts to find a clean spot in her petticoats to clean her own blade with, "how naïve of me, to think we might ever be such fools again," never mind that they have, they _are_ , that you have to trust your partner (however reluctant) with your back in a situation like this or you'll end up just as dead as trying to fight it out alone (never mind that her instincts clamour that she can trust him, because he's learned to bend and the man he is now might have listened and might not have judged who she'd been once, might have understood why she kept silent, might have understood that sometimes there can be honour, or at least reason, in a lie).

When she glances back up through the tangle of her hair, Athos's eyes are not (as she'd have suspected they might be, now) on her bared thigh, but rather watching her face, and for a moment they look at each other, the air electric with all they do not say, before he turns away to deliver a mercy-cut to the last of the ambush party still groaning on the forest floor; when he looks back at her, handkerchief in hand to tend to his bloodied rapier, it is once more with the cool, composed mien of the Musketeer captain, and all he says is, "Of all the things one might call you, naïve has never been among them," and she thinks, with sudden bitterness, _'Except when it comes to you.'_


	15. Weak (Milady, Richelieu)

**Weak**

 _The only plan going in on this prompt was to_ not _go for the predictability of Athos being the target of the accusation - it all kind of went from there, and got away from me a bit and kept going._ _I_ _have no idea how much the background framing for this one comes through, so if it doesn't make sense bother me. XD;; Takes place in the nebulous grey space between Seasons 1 and 2._

 _(I am also a little mystified by the number of baby/kid prompts I've gotten so far. It's fun trying to handle them in different ways, though.)_

* * *

 _"_ _You gave my baby away to strangers and let me believe he had died."_

She is furious; the words are a cold, measured accusation, but he can see the fire that blazes in her eyes and the way her hands curl into fists at her sides – the woman who stands at his bedside may sound every inch the heartless creature he trained and shaped, the ruthlessly dispassionate killer, and yet the rage is there, the fire at odds with the coolness of her tone, and it is all too clear something has changed since he last saw her, some discovery no doubt fuelling her accusation. She may sound ordinary, but she looks far more reminiscent of the bedraggled fury who'd first caught his eye five years ago, when he'd seen potential and promise and something he could use and shape, a creature whose loyalty he could ensure with promises of vengeance and power and the fine things life had denied her, but he suspects (fears, a little) those are not what she is seeking now.

"You could not have had your child and your revenge both," he says calmly, because he believes that – because the child would have made her soft, _weak_ , as motherhood and love have ever made women, and seeing the emotions that twist in her eyes only reinforces the certitude of his decision.

"So you made the choice for me," and the anger is plainer now, creeping into her voice as she rocks slightly forward on the balls of her feet, "you decided to steal away the last chance I might have had to a shred of happiness or peace, when you had _no right_ to such things, no right to –"

She cuts herself off with an abrupt gesture, the words lost in a choked sound as she turns away, and he watches silently, curious at this new dimension in her, this unexpected softening that he may yet be able to find a purpose for, because he still holds the cards, never mind that most would look at him and see only an aging man whose health is failing him; when she finally turns back, the mask (fractured as it may be) is firmly in place as she sits, demure and proper, on the bedside chair, and the implicit threat in her smile makes him wonder if perhaps, after all, he has miscalculated.


	16. Real (Athos x Milady)

**Real**

 _I almost want to write a parallel 5-sentence fic from Athos' side for this one, just to counterpoint. What is with me lately and wanting to write a lot more for these prompts? (Bonus: what is with me and not getting anywhere on the longer prompts and therefore hanging out in the short ones? -_- )_

* * *

 _Sometimes I look at you and I can't believe you're real and I wonder what you're doing with someone like me._

It's not just what you are (not just that you're a nobleman, wealthy and titled and book-educated and mannered); it's not just that I'm nothing in society's eyes, just a scrap of a girl who would've been swept into the gutter or an early grave if she hadn't been lucky and determined and ruthless when the time and the opportunity came. I never had time for dreams before I met you - dreams are a luxury ill-afforded when all your attention needs to be turned on simply getting through another day - and so I had never imagined that I might _not_ have to worry about what tomorrow would bring, not have to wonder whether I would have food in my belly or shelter from the elements or any one of a number of things your kind take for granted.

It's not about food or shelter or safety or any of that, hard as it is to believe I have them in abundance right now; more than anything else, it's about the fact that you're nothing like what I ever thought a nobleman could be - nothing like any of the ones I encountered before you, whose pockets I picked without hesitation (though I didn't hesitate to dip my fingers into yours at first). If you _had_ been like them, I would have never thought twice about how besotted you were with me, considered it little more than something I could use, some way to use _you_ … but you're the first person who cares about _me_ rather than what they can get from me, and though I've tried and tried and tried, it's changed me - _you've_ changed me.

I'm afraid that one day you'll wake up and realise that you've made a mistake and see me for what I was rather than what you've made me want to be - what you've made me think I _can_ be; more than anything, I'm afraid that the truth will destroy me.


	17. Wish (Athos x Milady)

**Wish**

 _I hope you get everything I ever wanted to give you...love, and a life without fear._

 _Those are things the man who fell in love with you wanted to share more than the world, things the man I am now could never give you; we've changed, you and I, in anger and in grief and in this bitter truth I should have heard then, and with how much has altered your happiness must surely lie somewhere else –_

The pen catches on a lump in the paper, spits ink across the surface, and with an irritated sound Athos shoves it back into the inkwell. It doesn't matter that he's marred the paper, not when this is a letter he'll never send, a letter he started as a way to try to sort out the tangle of his thoughts after the events of the last few days (Anne's ultimatum, d'Artagnan's wedding, Tréville's orders, his own unsought promotion, a pale glove in the dirt and the ruts of carriage wheels leading where he cannot follow) – not when he doesn't know what he'd say, if she were standing before him now.

She deserves more than a husband who didn't trust her, who'd abandoned and hanged her, more than a drunkard wedded more to his sword and her ghost than the flesh and blood creature who'd stood before him, and he – he has the Musketeers, and for the years since they have been enough.

(He is no longer sure what he deserves.)

* * *

Porting over the last of these to date from Tumblr. It was a fun meme and I'd love to revisit it in the future, but it's probably worth calling it done (and thus this complete) unless I end up with new prompts. XD

(As ever, you can find me as myalchod over on Tumblr. :3 )


	18. Affirmation (Athos x Milady)

**Affirmation  
**

 _OKAY apparently I lied about this being done because I posted to that effect and then there were more prompts. Which makes me happy because I really love this meme/prompt framework far too much._

 _Consider this snippet a prequel to_ keep right on stumblin' _\- a part of what happened in that nameless city years before. I really do dig these two as spysassins, I admit it ... XD_

* * *

 _"I would rather stay here and die than be without you for one more day."_

"You absolute idiot," she says through gritted teeth, "neither of us is going to die here," and never you mind that she's taken a bullet to the side, never mind the blood painting red flowers on her pale dress, never mind that there's gunfire still coming at them, because she's got that wild look in her eyes and he knows she's not about to let any of those things stop her, and if he had the time to dwell on any of those things right now he'd be relieved, because he means it, doesn't know how he'd manage without her beside him, not just here but _everywhere_ , and –

"Right," he grimaces as he whirls back to shoot at their pursuers, "no dying; I'm glad we've settled that," and the words are dry, betray nothing of how real the sentiment was, but she's determined and it galvanises him, fuels a fierce certainty that they _will_ manage to get out of this, that there will be a tomorrow, _together_ , because the mission is done and all they have to do now is survive – the night, the day, the week to come – and surely they can manage that, after everything else they've accomplished on this job.

Later, when they have finally shaken their pursuers and gone to ground, he peels away ruined silk and tends to the wound; later still, he presses her into the tiles of the tiny shower and loses himself in her long past when the water again runs clear. And when night finds them tangled in bedsheets and each other, the window open and a listless breeze doing little to cool the room, he toys with the wet ends of her hair and lies looking up at the unfamiliar shadows on the ceiling and comes back to his words again and realises that he'd meant them utterly – that life without her is unthinkable, unacceptable, a state he refuses to consider and hopes to never face.

"Stop thinking so loudly," she mumbles as she turns her face into his chest, and he laughs softly against her hair, feeling his heart swell with emotions he doesn't dare put a name to, and lets the the soft murmur of her breathing lull him into slumber.

* * *

 _So yeah. Flipping this back to open. If you feel like throwing a prompt into my Tumblr askbox (as always, I'm myalchod over there), by all means feel free! The way work has been running me lately, these little ficlets are about what I can manage (which is a pity when I have some far longer things I'm working on ...)._


	19. Brush (Athos x Milady)

**Brush  
**

 _5-sentence fic for a one-word prompt (in this case, the title) and a character or pairing (guess who?). I have no idea when this takes place – or perhaps I have too many ideas. Interpret as you will? I deliberately avoided using the prompt word in the ficlet itself._

* * *

They have never been given to gentleness; from the first what has been between them is too hot, too vital to be constrained, has found its expression in flares of passion (for better or for worse) as they each seek the answering core of fire in the other. They cut, bruise, bleed, bite – they demand and refuse to give, refuse to yield, and she wonders later if it was because they had always known how fragile forever is and simply blinded themselves to the truth: that passion is easier than perseverance, and that they have never learned how else to be.

(There had been moments of gentleness once, but they had always felt to her unreal, some sort of waking dream she could not quite bring herself to believe in, because the only reality she has ever lived is that such moments do not last and always come with a cost, and this will cost too much of what she has become, and without that person she does not know how she will survive.)

In the dimness his fingers skim against hers, his breath ghosts over her cheek and stirs her hair and her heart, and she turns her face away so he cannot see how so delicate a touch threatens to undo her. They are only shadows of the people they once were, drawn together in liminal spaces heavy with unvoiced regrets where past and present and future melt away, and this featherlight contact is the only apology she can give him.


	20. Chain (Athos x Milady)

**Chain  
**

 _The first of three absolutely lovely prompts given to me by vorpalbladedwitch over on Tumblr for the latest round of this meme._

* * *

 _He loved her hair - the tangled mess when she showered, the sleek sheet when she combed it, but most of all, he loved the soft curls he threaded his fingers through when they lay close in bed._

He remembers watching her comb it straight and pull it up, baring the line of her neck and the sweep of her shoulders as she skewered it into place with hairpin after hairpin; he remembers, when they'd returned from their evening out, taking his time at finding and removing each one of them, working his fingers carefully through her hair and against her scalp while she leaned back into him, remembers watching dark strands tumble free again, pushing them aside to taste her pale skin, salt and flowers. (He remembers it lank against her brow, sweat-sodden strands sticking to her throat, half-obscuring flesh already bruising, remembers curls shadowing her eyes as they'd stared at each other while the world fell apart around them, remembers blood and bile and the sickeningly-sweet smell of flowers overlaying it all.)

He remembers but she's gone, gone, dead and a ghost and he should hate her for all she had done, all that she cost him (his brother, his home, his _heart_ , and he cannot say which of those is the worst of her sins), but even when he hates her so much he thinks he cannot breathe he cannot stop even the most knife-edged memories from softening at the margins with her smiles, her laugh, and it drives him half-mad. It haunts him still when shadows paint spirals on the sheets in the still small hours of the night, chokes him when a breath on the street brings a floral scent all too reminiscent of her shampoo, winds around him in heavy coils when he sleeps until he wakes dazed, lost in what was until he reaches out and finds the bed cold and empty beside him, lost all the more thereafter.

Sometimes, he thinks he'd been sleeping his whole life before her, and that when they met that first touch had kindled his awareness and he'd become a man who felt and wanted and _lived_ instead of just being, and with that truth small wonder that losing her should leave him hollow and drifting, anchored only by recollections of the curve of her mouth and the heat in her eyes and the feel of her hair, catching on his fingers and tangled around his wrist like silken chains.


	21. Clash (Athos x Milady)

**Clash  
**

Another delightful prompt from vorpalbladedwitch on Tumblr that I think I decided was framed into a vaguely Cold War AU. This was not what I was going to write. Not _at all_. I kind of love it when that happens.

* * *

 _"Is that a gun? Or are you just happy to see me?"_

It would be something to laugh at were this not in deadly earnest, though that's the better part of why she says it – lets the words drip, heavy with sardonic undertones, from crimson-painted lips into the winter air, each puff of breath clouding the pistol he has pressed against her jaw before fading in the face of the bitter chill. The metal is cold against skin left exposed by her scarf but she hardly feels it for the burn of his knuckles through the fine wool, of his cheek against her head and his other hand tight enough to bruise around one wrist, and she knows this is real, knows this is where it ends (whatever _it_ is, and that's a question she's asked herself almost from the start, time and again, in these endless rounds of give and take and cloak and dagger) and that they would end up here someday but she hadn't thought it would be so soon, still doesn't know what she'd have wanted from him if things were different, and so she pulls her mouth into a smile she knows he can hear even if he cannot see and keeps the tension from her limbs and waits for what he'll do.

And what he'll do is spin her into the worn bricks behind them so he can look into her face, pin her there between the solid heat of his body and the cool wall, and she tips her head back, bares her throat in challenge rather than surrender, watches him from beneath half-lidded eyes as he swallows and wets his lips, but whatever misgivings he may have the barrel remains steady.

"Give me one good reason why I shouldn't kill you right this moment," he growls, low-voiced warning, and with those few words throws her off-balance, because she _knows_ how serious this all is but she all too clearly has misjudged him – because the man she thought she knew would have either hauled her in by now or simply shot her, and nowhere in her estimations did him posing a question enter into it; she's having to reevaluate, reconsider, and for the first time in all this there's a spark of something she should quash but doesn't, _can't_ , not when he's looking at her like that.

"You know what I did," she says, letting go of that knife-edged smirk because she can't laugh in the face of these unexpected possibilities; "now ask me why."


	22. Dangerous (Athos x Milady)

**Dangerous  
**

 _The last of vorpalbladedwitch's wonderful prompts. Apparently I am in the mood to write all the nebulous vaguely-modern spy AUs for these two. XD_

* * *

 _There's something about the slant of her mouth; she smirks more often than she smiles._

He's watched her from across the room since she first entered; he knows who she is, knows why she's here, but the fact that she's part of a job doesn't make her any less fascinating, with the knowing quirk of her lips matched by a secretive sparkle in her eyes and something challenging in the tilt of her head. He knows her on paper almost better than he knows himself, knows she's agent, enemy, nothing but trouble and danger, and yet that dossier could not have prepared him for how she is in person, because static images and sterile words don't do her justice and in the flesh she is vibrant and magnetic and everything he shouldn't be drawn in by.

(She's more dangerous than he had thought possible, could be more dangerous to him than she'll ever realise – could be his fall, his end, the breaking of him; he knows this long before she looks across the crowded space and finds his eyes unerringly, long before that smirk is just for him, long before the sound around them fades beneath the blood pounding in his ears, and yet knowing all of this he still cannot look away.)

There's something about the slant of her mouth when he kisses that smirk away later, something about bitten lips parting in a gasp as he works his way down her body, something about how they fit together in the desperate darkness of the alleyway, the arch of her neck and the dip of her waist and that maddening line of her mouth just barely visible in the dim gleam from distant sodium bulbs; her stockings are a disaster and his slacks are a ruin, and she may be his enemy and she will most likely be his demise, but he finds answers to all the questions he never thought to ask in the taste of her heavy on his tongue.

(It does not occur to him until years later, with wounded green eyes staring at him flint-hard above a smirk now hollow, that he could be her downfall as well.)


	23. Heart (Athos x Milady)

**Heart  
**

 _For the lovely Romirola, who was kind enough to come over to Tumblr to give me this awesome prompt - it was so much fun to write!_

 _Nonspecific framing: I envision it as taking place some indeterminate time after Season 3, but it's spoiler-free. Also not either of the two possible paths I originally expected to follow. Oops?_

* * *

 _He looks at the gift she has shoved into his hands, then at her, then back to the gift as his hands begin to shake._ "Why?" he blurts out, because he doesn't understand any of this – why she's giving him a gift, why she's here, why they aren't spitting invective at each other as they so often seem to do (but there's a softness to her he's not used to seeing, a shadrow of gentleness in her eyes that makes him hold back his usual response, biting or sardonic and just baffles him even further) – and it's _why this_ and _why now_ and _why here_ , fifty leagues removed from Paris and five hundred more from the people who might have done anything so simple as give each other a gift.

Her mouth twists into a familiar smile, edged and bitter, and yet he does not think she mocks him so much as she does herself or perhaps them both, "Because you need that, husband mine; because we have both forgotten and need to be reminded of the truth."

The words do nothing but intensify the trembling, until he sets the small casket down onto the table, presses his hands to the closed lid to try to still them on the carved wood, feeling the curves of petal and bud and leaf under his touch. He burns to see what lies inside it and yet he knows (god in heaven, how could he not know, when the wood is warm and shivers beneath his hands) and he has been cold for so long, so cold that he aches for what is within just as much as he fears it, because no matter how hollow he feels within it's _safe_ , and he dares not wonder if long-ago promises are worth the danger of opening, the box or his soul or his –

"It's yours," she says, though, just as he thinks to thrust it back at her (and he doesn't want to, wants to hold it close, but he's _terrified_ and it leaves him frozen, fingers digging into the intricate carvings), "it has been for years – it never stopped being yours, even on the worst of days," and he looks at her, _truly_ looks, and as he starts awake gasping it does not seem surprising, no matter how harsh the words, that she had been empty-handed when he could see his heart in her eyes.

* * *

 _PS: to the anon who left me a prompt on the last chapter - thank you! I love it and I'm totally throwing it onto my to-do list. (You can always submit prompts to me on Tumblr - link on my profile page; my askbox accepts anons so you don't even need an account.)_

 _... I think there were some other prompts in older comments too; I should really sort through those this weekend._


	24. Honour (Athos x Milady)

**Honour  
**

 _For the anonymous guest who left me this prompt along with a lovely review for chapter 22. Thank you so much, dearest Nonny!  
_

 _Set nebulously post-S2, flagrantly ignores S3 canon._

* * *

 _Something in him had snapped and he was not sure which of them was more surprised when he had challenged the duke in defence of her honor, but even after everything she was still his wife.  
_

"I wasn't aware you though I _had_ honour to defend," she snaps at him afterwards, pacing the chambers he's been given; her spine is straight, her muscles tight and trembling in a way that echoes the fury simmering in her eyes, and he wonders what's going through her mind, what she truly thinks, whether the root of her anger is his intervention or the implications that pervade it or something else altogether.

"Your honour reflects my own," he responds, because it's true and because this is no different from when he'd said he was to blame for her actions – because he'd made her who she is when he'd hanged her and in a thousand small ways since that day, and that has haunted him ever since he missed her at the crossroads and ever since they found her here across the sea, an achingly familiar face amid the strangeness of the English court – and because it is just one more small way in which so much of what they are and have been and will be is forever entwined, in which she remains inextricably woven into his very being, no matter the time or the distance or anything else that passes between them.

The words must be just the wrong ones (it is all he has seemed to manage around her, since her resurrection, since they first fell apart) because she whirls to face him, and there is enough rage blazing there that he nearly misses the shadows beneath it, enough rage to freeze him stock-still even as she snatches the basin beside her and hurls it at him with a strangled sound; the pain registers dimly, distantly, nothing next to what he sees etched plainly there in her face, the naked emotion all the more shocking for what thuds through him in response, an echo far louder than the thump of the bowl falling unnoticed to the carpet underfoot.

"Anne –?" he makes the single syllable all of the questions he cannot put words to, because this makes no sense, not when she had been the one to leave, not when she is the one who's put this space between them, kept him at arm's length since his arrival, looked at him like she wishes he were anywhere _but_ here, staring at her with all those unvoiced sounds dying on his lips and tasting like ash and despair on his tongue.

"Shut up," she snarls, "don't you dare, just _shut up_ ," and though the anger is still vibrating through her and the pain of old wounds flayed open is still plain underneath it there is more to that fire, more – there has always been more, and nothing between them will ever be simple or easy, and before he can react she has closed the space between them, and he wonders if it is possible to drown and burn in the same breath, and then wonders nothing at all.


End file.
